A Sunday at a Mexican church

Last Sunday we listened to a good sermon. It's a good thing to question things, God's big enough to tackle the toughest questions! After all, he gave us brains, didn't He?

At any rate, Annika got a few ideas about songs in Spanish to take back home.


We went out on Wednesday with a friend of mine, Mary, who took us to an ice cream parlor where we got some yogurt and fruit ice cream that became Annika's new favorite!

After that we walked home and took the scenic route... good times!

A somewhat more eventful week

We went to Queretaro to get the computer fixed and we decided to make a day trip out of it. This is considered one of the most beautiful cities in Mexico: it's full of narrow streets with a lot of buildings that somewhat resemble Gamla Stan and plenty of nice places to stop by and cool down. And since this is the city where the Mexican independence movement started, we had to stop by some important landmarks, like the house of the state governor who sent the voice out to start the insurrection. It was a nice trip.

While we were there, Annika decided she should use her time here a bit more constructively so she bought a blockflöjt and she has been picking it up quite nicely so far.

The next day, she and my mother cooked together a couple of very Mexican dishes (the all-time classic "tamales" and a less known dish called aztec pie). I have to say they both were incredibly tasty (I lucked out with a kitchen-capable Swede!).

We also went to a botanical garden and we actually got to see some impressive cacti. (See on the picture in the middle if you can spot what Annika was looking at!)












And to close the week off on a high note, we decided we'll go swimming a couple of times per week, starting today. We might not have swam much, but oh, did we have fun! (Well, actually, Annika did indeed swim a lot while I mostly tried the camera underwater.)

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A Mexican Mother Day celebration

This was a very intersting weekend where we celebrated Mother's Day.

Two of my aunts, a cousin, and her two girls came to visit and we had a good time. Annika taught one of the girls, Shivanie, how to make kladdkaka.




Then Annika treated them to some saltlakrits... but they didn't like it very much; they did like the mjukost and knäkebröd a lot though.





Later on that night we made a campfire and so Annika got a delayed majbrasa (she also taught us how to grill marshmallows the right way).


The next morning we went on a stroll with the kids along the river. Annika and I take this walk very often and she thinks of this as very representative of San Juan... this is a nice town, it's a real shame they don't take care of the beautiful nature they have in their backyard.

An almost uneventful week...

...And we decided it was time to go back.

While we waited for our bus to leave, we strolled around the beach taking some pictures of ourselves.







So we came back to San Juan del Rio...

We would have had a rather uneventful week sharing the leftovers of our bilar with Pia, the dog, but Annika had a better idea and decided getting sick instead -- just to spice up things a bit.

She got so dehydrated that we had to go to yet another hospital.... but, fortunately, she got better after it and now she's back to her own self again.

I got so worried about her when she got sick that I walked around looking like I had just seen a ghost!

Nah, I just had a bad hair day, the funny part is that Annika was so sick that she needed something in the morning and I had to go out in a rush to buy it and she tells me (although i have my doubts) that she just "forgot" to mention I looked like a mental escape; I had to find out about it by the smiles people had in their faces when they walked past me...

A week after...

So, we're still going down the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Annika says that the more she gets to see of Mexico, the more she wants to show me of Sweden.
A lot of movies are made in this area (great jungle locations) and we were told some of the places we visited were used as locations for big budget movies, but the amazing part of it is that the Olmec culture that lived here long ago were capable of tame the wilderness so they could live in it (it's really thick jungle somtimes!).

We spent some time in the coastal city of Veracruz, which is one of the busiest ports in the entire country and it has a lot of things going on all of the time; people were very nice there!

Let's see what else we encounter... God's good!

So, it's more interesting than just "happily everafter..."

First, we went to Mexico City to take the family to the airport in the hopes that they would make it to Sweden without much delay (which thank God, they did).

But before that we had to take Annika's parents around Mexico City in the public transportation system to my grandmother's house.

After this, Annika and I decided to take a well deserved honemoon and we thought we would start it right in Mexico City so we headed to the Zocalo, smack dab in the middle of the heart of the city.

Later, we got on a bus and made our way to the Gulf coast of Mexico, to an aunt's home in a town by the sea called Barra de Cazones in the state of Veracruz.










After we finished all the shrimp in the town, we had to move on to this really cool archeological zone called "El Tajin" which is really a very big place. Now I'm trying to make this pictures fit in this really slooooooooow computer in this really hoooooooot internet cafe in this really smaaaaaaaall town, so if the pictures look like a mess, well, just consider I'm using a 56K modem connection! :)